Forgive me if this has been asked/answered recently -- it's a bit difficult to perform a search about this when the board software ignores "where" and any word under four letters (buy, v1, etc.)

Can anyone suggest where I might buy a v1 Sansa e280? I've seen the link to froobi.com many, many times over the last few months, and it has been consistently "SOLD OUT!" I've seen suggestions as recent as the past few days to try Wal-Mart; however Wal-Mart no longer stocks or sells any Sansa in the e200 series, since they and every other retailer I've seen in the past 4 months or more are now pushing the Fuze, the View, and the Clip exclusively.

So far I've looked at Wal-Mart, Target, Circuit City, Best Buy, NewEgg, Amazon, Buy.com (they have an e280 for sale, but no mention of version, and no details on return policy...) and lastly I tried eBay which yielded one result from an eBay store -- but when the item listing tells you that the seller will "include a CD with over 2000 free songs!" I'm a bit wary of making the purchase. I can't see myself knowingly *purchasing* pirated music, and I don't see that being anything else.

I have had my own RockBox'ed e280 for close to a year, and my best friend fell in love with the idea of being able to carry his FLAC collection on the go, but even buying a refurbished model through Amazon landed me with a v2 unit.

At this point, it's not even essential to have one by Christmas -- while that would obviously be a bonus, I know he'd rather have RockBox later than cripped e280 original firmware on the 25th.

You need patience, Grasshopper, and Woot.com. They routinely have them for sale. Could be a week, could be a month, but they will come. Watch for Woot offs (when there are flashing lights on the page & the items change quickly), but otherwise check every day. They have had all variety of Sansas & I've yet to hear of v2's being sold. Got my 270 v1 there. Just don't blow all your money on the stuff you see while you wait for that v1.